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NZ With Ray & Mary

On March 2, we said goodbye to my son Bryan and hello to our good friends Ray & Mary. I have known Ray since we were both on the same dorm floor at UC Berkeley in 1976. They flew down from Auckland, having been vacationing there for a bit with Ray’s son Mike and his wife and child. Our first

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Fjordland With Bryan

Feb26 we drove from Queenstown to Te Anau, a little over two hours. Lake Te Anau is at the edge of Fjordland, a huge, pristine national park covering the southwest corner of the South Island. We checked into a VRBO property for the first time on this trip. It was an older home, but we had lots of space and

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Lake Tekapo and Dunedin

Feb15, after saying goodbye to Robby and Ryan, we drove ~3hrs north to Lake Tekapo and checked in at a hotel about a block from the water. The lakes in this region are an unusual color due to the water being mostly glacial runoff. The ‘Church Of The Good Shepherd’ was built on the shore of Lake Tekapo as an

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Wellington

Feb9, after lunch and a walk around Napier, we drove to Wellington, the capital of NZ. It is known as a wet and windy city and has quite a bit of history (at least for NZ). The downtown area is built around the waterfront and port, with hills rising steeply as you go away from the water. There are many

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Taupo & Napier

Feb7 we checked out of our terrific resort-hotel and headed south to Lake Taupo, about 90 minutes away. We checked in to the Sun Court Hotel where we had a good view of the lake and were just a couple minutes walk from the downtown restaurant area. We spent some time down at the lake and hurried back as a

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